Carrier route record
DLLGA→BOS
Delta Air Lines · New York to Boston
- Flights
- 543
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 7%
- Carriers
- 2
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Delta Air Lines.
Delta on LGA to BOS lands a B−, about a point worse than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in four arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by an hour and a half on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 543 flights, with a median arrival 14 minutes early.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate Delta on LGA to BOS from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.
Key figures
On time
76.4%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 521 completed flights
Avg delay
90 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
3.87%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
73.8%
Every carrier on LGA to BOS, 7,255 flights
These figures cover 543 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 14.2% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule. That is the number that wrecks a connection, and it is not visible in an on-time percentage alone.
Carrier by carrier
Delta against every carrier on LGA to BOS
Delta flew 543 of the 7,255 flights on LGA to BOS, about 7% of it. Its 76.4% on time is 3 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 73.8%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of two carriers on the route, where the range runs from Delta at 76.4% to Republic at 73.6%.
Only one carrier clears this site's 365-flight floor here, so there is no comparison to draw. The table below is the full picture.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Delta Air Lines (this page) | 543 | 76.4% | 90 min | 3.87% | B− |
| Republic Airways | 6,712 | 73.6% | 68 min | 5.44% | C− |
Departure window
When Delta runs best on this route
Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 34 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am209 flights91.4%
- 8am–11am108 flights78.5%
- 11am–2pm2 flights—
- 2pm–5pm42 flights70.7%
- 5pm–8pm40 flights65.0%
- 8pm–5am142 flights57.5%
Scale runs 50% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 57.5% on time, against 91.4% for the 5am–8am slot. By evening the aircraft flying these rotations have absorbed a full day of small delays and there is no slack left to recover in. The 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 209 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Delta on LGA to BOS through the year
June is the worst month at 54.5% on time, 34 points below February, the best at 88.2%. Summer afternoon convection and peak-season schedules land on the same weeks every year, so this is a pattern you can book around rather than a run of bad luck. August was the busiest month here, with 87 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 84.1% on time and Sunday the weakest at 70.1%. 14 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why Delta runs late on this route
One category carries most of the weight here. Carrier accounts for 42% of the 11,000 delay minutes carriers reported, and the remaining four split what is left. The split is by minutes rather than by flights, so a few very long delays count for as much as many short ones.
- 42%Carrier
- 31%Late-arriving aircraft
- 22%National Airspace System
- 4%Extreme weather
The largest share of delay minutes, 42%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. Unlike weather, that is a management outcome, and it is the category where the gap between two carriers on the same schedule is genuinely earned. It accounts for 4,684 of the 11,000 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 11,067 reported delay minutes.
The practical consequence: the 5am–8am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 91.4% on time here.
Cancellations run at 3.87%, against 1.81% nationally. That is about one flight in 25 cancelled outright. A cancelled flight is invisible in every on-time figure on this page, so the punctuality numbers above describe only the flights that actually operated.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 14.2% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% nationally. A 45-minute layover does not survive that, and no amount of walking quickly changes it. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum here, and two hours if the onward flight is on a separate ticket.
At 184 miles this is a short hop, and stage length matters more than it looks. A flight this short spends under two hours in the air, which leaves almost nothing to claw back a late pushback with. Delay here is decided on the ground, in the turn, which is why the 5am–8am window matters as much as it does.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 90.2% on time across 543 flights, 14 points above this direction. Departure banks, aircraft rotations and the congestion at each end all differ, so scoring the two directions together would average away a real 14 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 543 flights over twelve months is enough to clear this site's floor but not enough to pin the rate down tightly, and a single bad week moves it by more than a point. Treat the grade as a rough reading.
What to do with this
Booking Delta on LGA to BOS
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 3.87% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you an hour and a half; a cancelled flight costs you the day. Book the 5am–8am departure so there is still a schedule behind you if it goes wrong, and treat a same-day connection as optimistic. 521 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- LGA to BOS, every carrier
- Delta on BOS to LGA, the return leg
- Republic Airways on LGA to BOS73.6%
- Delta Air Lines network-wide record
- LaGuardia (LGA) delay statistics
- Boston Logan International (BOS) delay statistics
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, on-time performance data, July 2025 to June 2026. Last updated 15 September 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.